Richard Hamilton

Ronald Hunt (born 1936), acquired directly from the artist in 1963

Bonhams London, 29 March 2023, lot 56

Acquired from the above by the present owner

Lullin 52

The creation of Adonis in Y fronts, Richard Hamilton’s first screenprint, marked the start of a long and fruitful partnership between the artist and London’s pioneering print workshop Kelpra Studio. Based on Hamilton’s 1962 painting of the same subject, now housed at the Art Institute of Chicago, Adonis in Y fronts was inspired by both ancient Greek sculpture and contemporaneous advertisements published in bodybuilding magazines. The title is a clever twist on Venus in Blue Jeans, a popular song which topped the Billboard charts in 1962.

The present impression, a proof aside from the edition of 40, was a gift from the artist to art historian Ronald Hunt. Hamilton encouraged Hunt to move from the National Art Library to Newcastle, where he championed studies of Dada and Surrealism as Librarian of the University Fine Art Department, and curated a groundbreaking Francis Picabia exhibition (shown at the Hatton Gallery and Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 1964). Hunt treasured this gift from his dear friend, and at the artist’s request, exhibited it trimmed to the image and mounted on board so that it would mimic the painting.